10 Answers

I don’t know anything about engineering societies, but in general, joining associations in your career field can be beneficial. In the nursing field, the American Nurses Association has scholarships available to it’s members for furthering their education and then also have continuing educations programs to help nurses keep up to date with their practice. I would imagine an engineering society would have similar benefits for it’s members. I would recommend doing some research about them and joining one if you could afford to do it and plan to be in the engineering field for a while.

Societies are aaaall about networking. The guy next to you at the Society dinner? Wouldn’t ya know it, but he’s the HR director for that company that you want to work for.

It’s not about free jobs, mind. It’s about getting you into contact with people who would otherwise be out of reach. You meet and talk at the functions, get your name aired, and when your resume floats across his desk in a year or so, he’ll go, “Hey, I know that guy!” and the odds of you getting the position shoot up 15%.*

Like others have said, these things are about networking, sometimes ideas exchange.

Joining an engineering society as a student is affordable. They all have student rates that are orders of magnitude lower than the professional rate.

I was in several orgs as an engineering student. Benefits ranged from free lunch to interesting presentations to building things to planning events to free attendance at conferences and trips to the mainland.

You don’t have to attend every single meeting or event just because you’re in the club, nor do you have to be the president. You can decide how involved you want to be.

Really I don’t think there is anything to lose.

And if you want to go to grad school, it won’t hurt to befriend professors and get your grades above average.

I highly recommend it. It is a great enhancer to your resume and opens doors to conference and training discounts. I helped get the SMTA started and ended up its first Chairman of the Standards Committee and then its President. That experience proved invaluable in moving from a cubicle to being a self-employed consultant.